Читать книгу The History of Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression - Various - Страница 50
Оглавление(a)
Positions in administration of business involving power, influence and lucrative perquisites.
(b)
The use of cheap forced labor.
(c)
The acquisition on advantageous terms of foreign properties, business interests, and raw materials.
(d)
The basis for the industrial supremacy of Germany.
These acts were contrary to International Conventions, particularly Articles 46 to 56 inclusive of the Hague Regulations, 1907, the laws and customs of war, the general principles of criminal law as derived from the criminal laws of all civilized nations, the internal penal laws of the countries in which such crimes were committed and to Article 6 (b) of the Charter.
Particulars (by way of example and without prejudice to the production of evidence of other cases) are as follows:
1. Western Countries:
There was plundered from the Western Countries from 1940 to 1944, works of art, artistic objects, pictures, plastics, furniture, textiles, antique pieces and similar articles of enormous value to the number of 21,903.
In France statistics show the following:
| Removal of Raw Materials | ||
| Coal | 63,000,000 | tons |
| Electric energy | 20,976 | Mkwh |
| Petrol and fuel | 1,943,750 | tons |
| Iron ore | 74,848,000 | tons |
| Siderurgical products | 3,822,000 | tons |
| Bauxite | 1,211,800 | tons |
| Cement | 5,984,000 | tons |
| Lime | 1,888,000 | tons |
| Quarry products | 25,872,000 | tons |
and various other products to a total value of 79,961,423,000 francs.
Removal of Industrial Equipment
Total: 9,759,861,000 Francs, of which 2,626,479,000 Francs of Machine Tools.
Removal of Agricultural Produce
Total: 126,655,852,000 francs, i.e., for the principal
| Products: | |||
| Wheat | 2,947,337 | tons | |
| Oats | 2,354,080 | tons | |
| Milk | 790,000 | hectolitres | |
| Milk (concentrated and in powder) | 460,000 | hectolitres | |
| Butter | 76,000 | tons | |
| Cheese | 49,000 | tons | |
| Potatoes | 725,975 | tons | |
| Various vegetables | 575,000 | tons | |
| Wine | 7,647,000 | hectolitres | |
| Champagne | 87,000,000 | bottles | |
| Beer | 3,821,520 | hectolitres | |
| Various kinds of alcohol | 1,830,000 | hectolitres |
Removal of Manufactured Products
to a total of 184,640,000 francs.
Plundering
Francs: 257,020,024,000 from private enterprise.
Francs: 55,000,100,000 from the State.
Financial Exploitation
From June 1940 to September 1944 the French Treasury was compelled to pay to Germany 631,866,000,000 francs.
Looting and Destruction of Works of Art
The museums of Nantes, Nancy, Old-Marseilles were looted.
Private collections of great value were stolen. In this way Raphaels, Vermeers, Van Dycks and works of Rubens, Holbein, Rembrandt, Watteau, Boucher disappeared. Germany compelled France to deliver up “The Mystic Lamb” by Van Eyck, which Belgium had entrusted to her.
In Norway and other occupied countries decrees were made by which the property of many civilians, societies, etc., was confiscated. An immense amount of property of every kind was plundered from France, Belgium, Norway, Holland and Luxembourg.
As a result of the economic plundering of Belgium between 1940 and 1944 the damage suffered amounted to 175 billions of Belgian francs.
2. Eastern Countries:
During the occupation of the Eastern Countries the German Government and the German High Command carried out, as a systematic policy, a continuous course of plunder and destruction including:—
On the territory of the Soviet Union the Nazi conspirators destroyed or severely damaged 1,710 cities and more than 70,000 villages and hamlets, more than 6,000,000 buildings and made homeless about 25,000,000 persons.
Among the cities which suffered most destruction are Stalingrad, Sevastopol, Kiev, Minsk, Odessa, Smolensk, Novgorod, Pskov, Orel, Kharkov, Voronezh, Rostov-on-Don, Stalino and Leningrad.
As is evident from an official memorandum of the German command, the Nazi conspirators planned the complete annihilation of entire Soviet cities. In completely secret order of the Chief of the Naval Staff (Staff Ia No. 160¼1, dated 29, IX, 1941), addressed only to Staff officers, it was said:
“The Fuehrer has decided to erase from the face of the earth St. Petersburgh. The existence of this large city will have no further interest after Soviet Russia is destroyed. Finland has also said that the existence of this city on her new border is not desirable from her point of view. The original request of the Navy that docks, harbor, etc. necessary for the fleet be preserved—is known to the Supreme Commander of the Military Forces, but the basic principles of carrying out operations against St. Petersburgh do not make it possible to satisfy this request.
It is proposed to approach near to the city and to destroy it with the aid of an artillery barrage from weapons of different calibres and with long air attacks.
The problem of the life of the population and the provisioning of them is a problem which cannot and must not be decided by us.
In this war * * * we are not interested in preserving even a part of the population of this large city.”
The Germans destroyed 427 museums, among them the wealthy museums of Leningrad, Smolensk, Stalingrad, Novgorod, Poltava and others.
In Pyatigorsk the art objects brought there from the Rostov museum were seized.
The losses suffered by the coal mining industry alone in the Stalin Region amount to 2,000,000,000 rubles. There was colossal destruction of industrial establishments in Makerevka, Carlovka, Yenakievo, Konstantinovka, Mariupol, from which most of the machinery and factories were removed.
Stealing of huge dimensions and the destruction of industrial, cultural and other property was typified in Kiev. More than 4,000,000 books, magazines and manuscripts (many of which were very valuable and even unique) and a large number of artistic productions and valuables of different kinds were stolen and carried away.
Many valuable art productions were taken away from Riga.
The extent of the plunder of cultural valuables is evidenced by the fact that 100,000 valuable volumes and 70 cases of ancient periodicals and precious monographs were carried away by Rosenberg’s staff alone.
Among further examples of these crimes are:
Wanton devastation of the city of Novgorod and of many historical and artistic monuments there. Wanton devastation and plunder of the city of Rovno and of its province. The destruction of the industrial, cultural and other property in Odessa. The destruction of cities and villages in Soviet Karelia. The destruction in Estonia of cultural, industrial and other buildings.
The destruction of medical and prophylactic institutes, the destruction of agriculture and industry in Lithuania, the destruction of cities in Latvia.
The Germans approached monuments of culture, dear to the Soviet people, with special hatred. They broke up the estate of the poet Pushkin in Mikhailovskoye, desecrating his grave, and destroying the neighboring villages and the Svyatogor monastery.
They destroyed the estate and museum of Lev Tolstoy, “Yasnaya Polyana” and desecrated the grave of the great writer. They destroyed in Klin the museum of Tsaikovsky and in Penaty, the museum of the painter Repin and many others.
The Nazi conspirators destroyed 1,670 Greek Orthodox Churches, 237 Roman Catholic Churches, 67 Chapels, 532 Synagogues, etc.
They broke up, desecrated and senselessly destroyed also the most valuable monuments of the Christian Church, such as Kievo-Pecherskaya Lavra, Novy Jerusalem in the Istrin region, and the most ancient monasteries and churches.
Destruction in Esthonia of cultural industrial and other premises: burning down of many thousands of residential buildings: removal of 10,000 works of art: destruction of medical and prophylactic institutions. Plunder and removal to Germany of immense quantities of agricultural stock including horses, cows, pigs, poultry, beehives and agricultural machines of all kinds.
Destruction of agriculture, enslavement of peasants and looting of stock and produce in Lithuania.
In the Latvian Republic destruction of the agriculture by the looting of all stock, machinery and produce.
The result of this policy of plunder and destruction was to lay waste the land and cause utter desolation.
The overall value of the material loss which the U.S.S.R. has borne, is computed to be 679,000,000,000 rubles, in state prices of 1941.
Following the German occupation of Czechoslovakia on 15 March 1939 the defendants seized and stole large stocks of raw materials, copper, tin, iron, cotton, and food; caused to be taken to Germany large amounts of railway rolling stock, and many engines, carriages, steam vessels and trolley buses; plundered libraries, laboratories, and art museums of books, pictures, objects of art, scientific apparatus and furniture; stole all gold reserves and foreign exchange of Czechoslovakia, including 23,000 kilograms of gold of a nominal value of £5,265,000; fraudulently acquired control and thereafter looted the Czech banks and many Czech industrial enterprises; and otherwise stole, looted and misappropriated Czechoslovak public and private property. The total sum of defendants’ economic spoliation of Czechoslovakia from 1938 to 1945 is estimated at 200,000,000,000 Czechoslovak crowns.
